iphone will not alert me for synced Google calendar events

I am having an issue with google calendar and syncing it with the ipone (new 32gb iphone 3gs). I used google's built in sync function for the iphone. Basically it uses exchange as a backend to sync contacts and calendar. It syncs everything perfectly.

The problem is that I am missing appointments because no alert comes up for anything synced from google. When you go into the event details on the iphone, the alert is set to none. Events created right on the iphone will alert me but none from google which is my primary calendar.

How can I make the iphone alert for every calendar entry, or make google force the alert setting to the iphone at sync? Any advice would be great.